ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Frank Walsh still pays dues to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, but more than four years have passed since his name was called at the union hall where the few available jobs are distributed. Mr. Walsh, his wife and two children live on her part-time income and a small inheritance from his mother, which is running out. Sitting in the food court at a mall near his Maryland home, he sees some of the restaurants are hiring. He says he can’t wait much longer to find a job. But he’s not ready yet. “I’d work for...

The contrast between New Hampshire’s two candidates for U.S. Senate couldn’t have been clearer this past weekend. In one town, Senator Jeanne Shaheen spoke to the International Brotherhood Of Electrical Workers over a pancake breakfast, and in another, former Senator Scott Brown received a rowdy and enthusiastic reception at a tailgate organized by College Republicans at the University of New Hampshire. It sounds like a normal weekend in October, so why the significance? I can’t help but marvel at the juxtaposition: a traditional, pre-planned campaign event with the candidate as the main attraction and the other, a tailgate loosely organized...

Democrats and many in the media routinely complain about money spent in politics, and they regularly lash out at conservatives and big business. Turns out, unions are the top spenders in politics. Twelve of the top 20 political donors from 1989 to 2014 have been unions, which overwhelmingly support Democratic causes, according to an analysis done by OpenSecrets.org's Center for Responsive Politics. Seven of the top 10 donors overall give almost exclusively to politicians or groups on the left. ActBlue, a political action committee that raises money for Democrats and progressive causes and features Michigan Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Schauer...

President Obama’s erstwhile promise assuring Americans that, “if you like your plan, you can keep it,” has since been unceremoniously exploded by the dawning realities of the health care overhaul, and the trend of labor unions — who once so enthusiastically stood alongside the president while he trumpeted the magical benefits the law would produce — now balking at the more limited options with which they and their members are shortly to be confronted, is moving full steam ahead.Unions have been pressuring the Obama administration for months to stretch the federal subsidy program meant to apply to low-income workers whose...

PHILADELPHIA - It's a union protest designed to bring you to tears. Residents at the Vista apartment building on the 2800 block. of N. 47th St. in Philadelphia's Wynnefield section are losing their minds over a recording played by protesters from IBEW local 98. Last Wednesday, the union set up an iPod and loudspeakers that plays this recorded message: "Your community is crying for jobs, participation and fair wages." It's what comes next that brings a tear to the eye: an extended crying jag by a seemingly fussy infant. The recording- which began last Wednesday- runs each weekday from around...

Tony carmago! You are a sorry excuse for an electrical worker! Word of Advice: When you decide to sucker punch someone and there are cameras around, don't wear a jacket with your name embroidered on it. Apparently your members don't belong to the Rocket Scientists Union.

There’s been a lot of denials going on since last Friday when it came to light that the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) may have turned away non-union crews from helping in hurricane ravaged New Jersey because they did not carry union cards. Despite a denial by the union’s international president, Ed Hill, a statement made by New Jersey’s governor Chris Chistie, it turns out, the IBEW has demanded unionization of the non-union crews.On Friday, Ray Hardin, General Manager of Decatur [AL] Utilities appeared on Fox Business News and stated that his crews were being turned away from Hurricane...

Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc across the Eastern Seaboard, from North Carolina to New England, knocking down power lines, and flooding coastal communities. Hardest hit were New York and New Jersey, leaving more than a million residents without power and many without homes. IBEW members from throughout the country are pitching in to restore power and fix damaged infrastructure. “Devastating,” Wall, N.J., Local 1289 Business Manager Edward Stroup, III, says about Sandy. Stroup represents workers at Jersey Central Power and Light – a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp. – which provides power to more than 1 million central New Jersey residents....

A business coordinator at a power company in western Georgia told The Daily Caller Friday afternoon that workers from his electric-utility employer were not permitted to help restore power to New York consumers because they would not join the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). The revelation comes on the heels of similar stories TheDC has reported about power crews from Alabama and Florida who volunteered to fix downed power lines after Hurricane Sandy left millions in the Northeastern United States in the dark this week. “We’re not a large utility, so we were only able to send up two...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie bristled at reports Friday that an electricians’ union stood in the way of some utility workers who wanted to help restore power to victims of Hurricane Sandy. He would use his emergency-management powers, he said, to guarantee that nonunion crews could help restore his state’s electricity grid without interference.“I’ve been on the phone with PSE&G [Public Service Electric and Gas Company], JCP&L [Jersey Central Power & Light] and the union, and they’ve all absolutely promised me they would never turn away a single worker whether they were union or nonunion, and I wouldn’t allow it,” Christie told...

Union halting power repair crews is top Democratic donorPaul Bedard - Washington Secrets November 2, 2012 | 12:36 pm The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, cited in news reports for halting nonunion repair crews from helping to restore power in superstorm Sandy's New Jersey-New York path, is one of nation's top union donors to Democrats, a group President Obama last year praised in a visit to an IBEW training Center. The Center for Responsive Politics, a public political spending watchdog, said IBEW has the nation's fifth highest spending political action committee, doling out nearly $2.3 million, 97 percent of which...

SEASIDE HEIGHTS, NEW JERSEY (WAFF) - The hurricane-ravaged east coast has been receiving north Alabama help, but crews learned they could not help out in New Jersey unless they affiliated with a union.A six man crew from Decatur Utilities headed up there this week, but Derrick Moore, one of the Decatur workers, said they were told by crews in New Jersey that they can't do any work there since they're not union employees.The general manager of Decatur Utilities, Ray Hardin told Fox Business they were presented documents from the International Brotherhood of Electric Workers at a staging area in Virginia....

Union representing electric and phone utility repair crews charged Monday that profit-driven cutbacks significantly hampered the response to Tropical Storm Irene in the week following the Aug. 27-28 tempest. And as state legislators concluded their two-part hearing on the Irene response, they also heard a wide array of ideas for improving Connecticut's readiness for future storms, including a launching statewide assault on invasive vine species to hiring retired local repairmen to help out-of-state emergency crews find their way. "Money is clearly a motivator," Frank Cirillo, business manager for Local 420 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, told a panel...

Chicago Union Leaders Grab Millions in Pension Loophole Updated: Tuesday, 23 Aug 2011, 6:42 AM CDT Published : Monday, 22 Aug 2011, 8:38 PM CDT By Dane Placko, FOX Chicago News Chicago - How would you like to get a 25 percent annual return on your retirement investment? It's a great deal, and it's not available to regular folks. But it is -- legally -- available to union officials who started their careers working for the City of Chicago. Take Tim Foley, who's the head of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 134. Under a little-known provision of the...

With around 25 employees, John King owns one of the largest non-union electrical contracting businesses in the Toledo, Ohio area. As a non-union contractor, his business happens to be doing well at a time when unions in the construction industry are suffering. This, it seems, has made the usual animosity unions have for him even greater, making him a prime target of union thugs. So much so, that one of them tried to kill him last week at his home. John King didn’t plan on being an enemy of unions. In fact, he says all he’s ever wanted to...

No vandalism. No violence. No Harassment. No Obstruction. No intimidating. No threatening. No Blocking. No Trespassing. Those were just a few of the restrictions placed on members of the local 827 IBEW bargaining unit, their dependents, minors, households and relatives in an injunction signed by NJ Superior Court Justice Mary Beth Rogers last week. Rogers also set restrictions on picketing, allowing no more than six picketers at the entrance to any Verizon owned property at any one time. Picketers were also advise that no more than two picketers may picket a private residence of a Verizon employee and must stay...

In Delaware, 50 union workers, including 20 Electrical Workers (IBEW) members are at work and paying their bills and mortgages thanks to economic recovery money that is also saving Amtrak millions of dollars in new equipment.Those jobs are part of the as many as 3.3 million jobs that President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act saved or created since it was signed into law in February 2009. In the three months prior to passage of the legislation, the nation had lost 2.2 million jobs–more than 8 million jobs disappeared during the Bush administration. The Delaware workers are converting old and abandoned dining...

Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) was sued on Monday by a large union pension fund that accused the Wall Street investment bank of overpaying its executives. The International Brotherhood of Electric Workers fund filed the lawsuit in Delaware Chancery Court, seeking to recover money for the company on behalf of other shareholders. It seeks to stop Goldman from allocating roughly 47 percent of 2009 net revenue as compensation, saying such allocations "vastly overcompensate management and constitute corporate waste." The lawsuit also wants Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and others in management, rather than shareholders, to be responsible for charitable contributions that...

Leadership: Scores of congressmen and women are trying to hide from their constituents this August recess as the revolt over ObamaCare continues. If you haven't seen him or her lately, you might try your refrigerator.IBD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For FailureIt's amazing how frightened of the community the party of the great community organizer has become now that the community has organized itself against his attempt to impose socialized medicine on the country. They cheered when he told them to get in the faces of their opponents. Now they won't show their faces, period. Senate Majority Whip Dick...

‘I Get a Little Wonky’ It was not a smart assumption, the senator says in an interview, for her or her staff to think voters knew the real Hillary Clinton from her Senate campaigns. By Jon Meacham NEWSWEEK Updated: 4:04 PM ET Jan 12, 2008 In a nondescript classroom on the grounds of the Electrical Training Institute of IBEW Local 11, amid the stuff of a campaign-event holding room—bottles of water, tea, a Sharpie laid out next to a few placards and photos that need autographing for local supporters—Hillary Clinton sat down with NEWSWEEK's Jon Meacham for an interview that...

Is the recent talk radio listenership dropoff continuing? The first set of ratings figures for the three-month period of March, April and May, have emerged tonight and early indications are of a sustained, rocky period for talk radio. It's just a little bit too soon to know for sure, however.

The union representing 4,660 Boeing Co. employees in Wichita, Kan., plans to picket the company at various sites around the country, including the Renton headquarters of Boeing Commercial Airplanes Group. The Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace said its members also will picket Boeing's Chicago headquarters, and the Toronto, Ontario, headquarters of Onex Corp., which is in the process of buying the Wichita facility. The union said more than 1,100 employees have been laid off by Boeing and have been told they will not have jobs with Onex when the sale closes on June 16. Meanwhile, the International Brotherhood...

Organized labor, the mobilizing and financial force of the Democratic Party, is in disarray over how best to spend the millions of union dollars that no longer can go to the national party. The uncertainty of the new campaign finance law, along with infighting and divergent interests among unions, have raised concerns about Democrats' prospects in next year's elections. In the 2002 campaign cycle, labor unions spent $96.5 million, mostly to elect Democrats. Almost $36 million of that came in the form of unrestricted donations known as soft money. The new ban against such unlimited contributions remains in place until...